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Thursday, 24 November 2016

Another tech support scam

The call was, of course, from David at "Windows Technical Department", a company that has often called me in the past. And it was about malware on my computer, of course.

I decided to play "upstairs, downstairs". This is the game whereby my phone is downstairs, but the computer is upstairs. No, I don't have a mobile phone. No, it isn't a laptop. Yes, I can bring it downstairs.

So David waited patiently for five minutes, then I spoke to him again to tell him the good news. I've brought the monitor down, now I need to get the big box. He hung on for another five minutes while I got the big box, then I asked him how to plug it all in. He explained that to me, and another five minutes passed while I did that, and I got back to him and he asked me to switch it on.

"I don't have a power point here. I'll have to get an extension."

Another five minutes passed while I did that, then I plugged it in. "Are you connected to the internet?" he asked. "No, the internet connection is upstairs." "Do you have Wifi?" "What's that?" "Can you connect to the internet now?" "Yes," I said, "hang on, I'll do that."

Ten minutes went by, with me giving him an occasional piece of encouragement, as I humped the computer, monitor and keyboard upstairs again. Then I proudly told him "OK, it's connected to the internet now." "What do you see." "Hang on, I'll go and have a look."

I think at this point he realised that we were back with the original "upstairs, downstairs" problem. He changed tack.

He consulted with someone in his office. "We need to upload security to your system, we can do that via your IP address. It will cost you £2 for five years, and that will cover your computer even if you buy a new one." "Well, that sounds very reasonable, let's do it." "You'll pay with credit card." "I don't have a credit card." "Debit card?" "I don't have one of those either, can I pay you by cheque?" "The amount is too small for a cheque." "Can I pay you cash, then?" I'm kind of hoping he'll give me his address, but it didn't work. He's hoping I'll give him a credit card number to steal from, but that didn't work.

He hung up. I managed to waste an hour of his time, so that's a dozen other people he didn't try to scam. Caller ID said "01467646309" but that was fake, of course. However, if you google that number, he's obviously been a busy little bee.